The Biodemography of Subsistence Farming: Population, Food and Family

James W. Wood

Apr 2020 · Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology Book 87 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

Viewing the subsistence farm as primarily a 'demographic enterprise' to create and support a family, this book offers an integrated view of the demography and ecology of preindustrial farming. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, it examines how traditional farming practices interact with demographic processes such as childbearing, death, and family formation. It includes topics such as household nutrition, physiological work capacity, health and resistance to infectious diseases, as well as reproductive performance and mortality. The book argues that the farming household is the most informative scale at which to study the biodemography and physiological ecology of preindustrial, non-commercial agriculture. It offers a balanced appraisal of the farming system, considering its strengths and limitations, as well as the implications of viewing it as a 'demographic enterprise' rather than an economic one. A valuable resource for graduate students and researchers in biological and physical anthropology, cultural anthropology, natural resource management, agriculture and ecology.

About the author

James W. Wood is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Demography at Pennsylvania State University and a Senior Scientist in Penn State's Graduate Program on Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment, USA. His previous book, The Dynamics of Human Reproduction: Biology, Biometry, Demography (1994) won the 1995 W. W. Howells Prize for best book in biological anthropology awarded by the American Anthropological Association. He conducted several years' worth of fieldwork on the demography and ecology of subsistence farming in highland New Guinea and in the northern Orkney Islands of Scotland, and retired in 2017.